


dreamers often lie

by MercutioLives



Category: Romeo et Juliette - Presgurvic, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: 5 Times, Canonical Character Death, Drabble Collection, Emotions, F/M, Growing Up, M/M, Minor Character Death, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercutioLives/pseuds/MercutioLives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Mercutio denied his feelings + one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dreamers often lie

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written one of these before, and I'm not sure how great it is. It was harder than it seemed, really. But I love Mercutio being in denial about shit, so I'm not actually sorry.

**one.** ****

Nurse told him it was alright to cry, that children were allowed to feel sad when their mothers died, especially when it meant that they were orphans now. Mercutio said that he didn't need to cry, and it was true: his eyes were so dry that they hurt when he blinked, and he couldn't have shed a tear even if he wanted to. Valentine cried so loudly that the priest presiding over the funeral was nearly drowned out; people looked at him, squirming in his brother's arms and red-faced, and shook their heads in pity. He was only three years old, so they were patient with the noise. It was Mercutio they would later whisper about: seven years old and sober as a judge at his own mother's funeral. After everything was done and the boys were installed in an unused room in their uncle's estate, Valentine exhausted and already fast asleep, Nurse asked Mercutio why he had not wept.

_Crying is for children,_ he said slowly, patiently, as if she were the seven-year-old and he the adult. She only sighed as she blew out the candle, kissed the top of his head, and shut the door on her way out of the room. Mercutio did not sleep that night, staring up at the darkened ceiling and remembering his mother's face.

 

**two.**

At twelve, Mercutio was already known for his trouble-making ways. He put on his second-best doublet to climb trees, stole fruit and nuts from right under the vendors' noses, and goaded boys much older and bigger than he into fights just for the sake of it. The Prince, his uncle, barely seemed to notice. He didn't notice much of  _anything_ where his nephews were concerned: the boys had a roof over their heads; his duty to his late sister was done. He didn't see the look of barely-concealed resentment in Mercutio's eyes when he told Nurse to have his nephew cleaned up.

_He does love you,_ Nurse would assure him as she scrubbed the mud from his face and hair. _He just isn't accustomed to children, is all._

 _I don't care,_ Mercutio would reply with a shrug and a cheeky grin.

 

**three.**

On a sunny May afternoon, he met Lucia, a maidservant of House Montague. Her hair fell in bouncy, jet-black ringlets over her shoulders, her eyes were bright green, and her rosy cheeks dimpled when she smiled. She was sixteen years old: as unattainable to thirteen-year-old Mercutio as the moon and just as beautiful. But for all that he behaved like a mischievous urchin, he was clever and gifted with words, and he knew it. He decided that he would win Lucia's attention, age be damned, but when the other boys teased him for the time he spent trying to get her to notice him, he denied fiercely any real interest. It was only a game, a lark: he turned their mockery back onto them, saying that they were only jealous that he could get beautiful older girls to smile at him and they could not.

When she laughed and pinched his cheek, he pretended that her rebuff didn't send his young heart hurtling down into his stomach. He later proved it by breaking the nose of the first boy to laugh at him for his failure.

 

**four.**

When Valentine turned eleven and Nurse was relieved of her service to the Prince's household, Mercutio was careful not to miss her. He was fifteen now: too old to care about servants, after all. Never mind that she had been more of a parent to him and his brother than their father, mother, or uncle. He was also careful not to grieve when he learned that, a mere three months later, the old woman had died. Besides, he had more pressing things to worry about, he told himself: the Prince had begun to notice him, now that he was old enough to start preparing for his duties as heir. _Too little, too late,_ Mercutio thought sardonically: he had already decided not to care about that, either.

 

**five.**

Old Capulet's nephew was a fascinating specimen. Strikingly pretty and perpetually angry, Tybalt was the perfect target for Mercutio's mockery. Better yet, he never failed to rise to the bait, providing an endless source of entertainment for the wayward nephew of Verona's prince. Rumours clustered around Tybalt Capulet like gnats: he was mad; he was sickly; he had eyes for his cousin, the pretty Julia. That he reacted to any and all goading with virulent rage only lent fuel to the fires of gossip.

Certainly, Mercutio did not feel _bad_ for Tybalt. It was great fun to watch his eyes go dark with ire, to launch toxic barbs with his tongue and run, cackling, when Tybalt gave chase. When the dour Capulet was not to be seen with his usual clutch of cousins, and tongues wagged that he had had one of the fits that were said to have plagued him since he was a boy, Mercutio only mourned the loss of his favourite plaything. Nothing more.

 

**plus one.**

The pain was practically blinding, and his strength was pouring from him as quickly as his blood through the fingers of the hand he clutched to his wound. But even for all that he wanted to fall to his knees and weep with the fear of dying that made his heart shudder, he tried his hardest to laugh and joke – to prove to his friends that it was nothing but a little scratch and he would be just fine. After all, what was a little blood and pain to the indomitable Mercutio?

Yet when Romeo grabbed him and tried to keep him upright, an apology on his lips, Mercutio found that he couldn't keep it locked behind his teeth any longer. He raged and spat, cursing all the things he could think to curse, and let himself shake with terror all the while. His eyes were wet when they made contact with Romeo's; he knew that his friend saw everything he had never said. It was too late now to say it all, there wasn't enough time or energy in him to try, but it was all there in the way he gripped Romeo's hand and watched the disbelief move across his beloved features. In his last moments, he tried in vain to make one more confession.

(Romeo knew what his friend meant to say, even as the words died with him, and he was selfishly happy in his grief to know that he had earned the rarest of all Mercutio's jealously-guarded feelings: his love.)

 


End file.
